1997 v 2024: Labour glory but a very different story?

Blair surged to power with a Nineties soundtrack of optimism and Tory economic success. For Keir Starmer, if the polls are right, it will be a case of hard graft from day one.

- George Chesterton

THE rush to draw parallels between the 1997 Labour landslide after 18 years of government by a Conservative Party at civil war and, era potential Labour landslide in 2024 after 14 years of government by a Conservative Party at civil war is officially on. The trouble with this convenient analogy is that there are so few parallels other than the one just mentioned.

The number of Commons seats might end up being comparable, if the polling turns out to be correct (a mighty 20-point lead to wet Keir Starmer’s whistle with a Labour rebirth in the key battlegrounds of Scotland and “deep England”) but, as ever, history turns out to be not so neat.

By almost any economic, cultural and social metric, the battlegrounds of these elections 27 years apart are as distinct as Waterloo and Yemen. The politics, too, are different, although the Conservative Party of 1997 shared the same sense of fatigue that besets it today. John Major was the beneficiary of the palace coup by which all others shall be judged, when MPs defenestrated Margaret Thatcher in 1990, but Major at least went into 1997 having won an election five years earlier. Rishi Sunak is the prime minister threetimes removed from a mandate, having led the counter-revolution to Liz Truss’s insurgency, which itself overturned Boris Johnson who — though winning in 2019— had come to office by turfing out Theresa May, who had herself acceded after the resignation of David Cameron. When it comes to disruptors, this lot make Major’s enemies look like amateurs. Major faced down one direct challenge in 1995, but by comparison, Sunak is about as secure as a branch of Foot Locker in a riot.